The Iowa Judicial Building. (Photo and seal courtesy of the Iowa Judicial Branch)
Warren County’s former top prosecutor has been sanctioned a fourth time for allegedly violating the rules of professional conduct for Iowa lawyers.
Former Warren County Attorney Bryan Tingle of Des Moines was recently charged by the Attorney Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Iowa with a lack of diligence in case handling, failure to expedite litigation, and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.
The charges are tied to two separate disciplinary cases. In one of those cases, the board alleges Tingle failed to appear in court for a client and was removed by the court as his client’s attorney. In the second case, Tingle was alleged to have filed multiple last-minute motions to continue two cases and was removed from one criminal case when he failed to appear for a court hearing.
As a result of those two cases, the Attorney Disciplinary Board has issued Tingle a public reprimand.
Court records show that in 2010, after losing his bid for reelection as Warren County’s top prosecutor, Tingle accepted a job as the attorney for the City of Cumming. In May 2011, he was arrested after Carlisle police alleged he was seen in his car while holding a glass methamphetamine pipe. After a search of his vehicle uncovered three pipes and a small amount of the drug, Tingle was charged with possession of methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia. He later pleaded guilty to both charges, according to the board.
The board then accused Tingle of “knowingly and willfully violating the very laws you were charged with enforcing as county attorney.” In that disciplinary case, Tingle was issued a public reprimand.
In two separate, subsequent disciplinary cases dating back to 2020 and 2022, Tingle was privately admonished by the board for failing to appear in court on his clients’ behalf.
Other disciplinary board actions
Other Iowa-licensed attorneys subject to recent action by the Attorney Disciplinary Board include:
— Kim Cohenour Roddick, of Galena, Ill., who is alleged by the board to be responsible for a “near total loss of accountability for client funds” paid to her for legal services, and “a complete inability to safekeep client funds.”
The board alleges that its Client Security Commission found that after an attempted audit of Roddick’s client account, neither Roddick nor the commission could determine “how much the account was off by.” The commission was forced to end its audit unsuccessfully, the board alleges.
Roddick was formally charged with comingling attorney and client funds, failing to reconcile financial accounts, improper deposits of client funds, and mixing funds from Iowa and Illinois client trust accounts.
The board stated it was “gravely concerned” with the commission’s inability to audit Roddick’s accounts and with the fact that Roddick “answered untruthfully to multiple questions” on a questionnaire dealing with client security issues. As a result of those findings, the board recently issued Roddick a public reprimand.
— James Rollins of Darien, Ill., who has applied for reinstatement of his Iowa law license following a five-month suspension in 2024. The suspension was tied to allegations that in 2017, Rollins submitted fraudulent expense documents to a law firm where he’d recently begun working. The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission alleged that Rollins acted dishonestly by “creating fake documents, including invoices, a bank statement and checks, which he submitted to his law firm, falsely representing that he had paid business expenses totaling $81,000,” although his actual expenses were closer to $18,000.
In choosing to suspend Rollins’ Illinois law license for five months, the commission said Rollins had “actively sought to defraud” his partners in the law firm.
“He lied when he was confronted in May 2017 and then created additional phony documents,” the commission stated. “He lied again when he was confronted in August 2017. (He) intentionally tried to cheat his new law firm out of $63,000 and would have succeeded if he had not been caught.”
The Iowa Supreme Court later took reciprocal action and suspended Rollins’ Iowa license for five months based on the Illinois commission’s actions. A hearing on Rollins’ application for reinstatement of his Iowa license is scheduled for April 9, 2025.
— David Joseph Martin of La Junta, Colorado, whose Arizona law license was suspended last year for five months for allegedly failing to provide services to a client in a personal-injury case, which resulted in the dismissal of his client’s case. Martin was accused of repeatedly neglecting his client’s case and then misleading the client as to the status of her case after it had been dismissed by the court. The Iowa Supreme recently took reciprocal action, suspending Rollins’ Iowa license for five months based on the actions taken in Arizona by that state’s presiding disciplinary judge.